My name is Li Zhen, the new teacher for Math 6A class at Newton Chinese School. I was thrilled by the enthusiasm and curiosity of all the students yesterday. Thank you!

I had been in two of Mr. Li’s lessons last term to make the transition as smooth as possible. Going forward, I’d like to have more communication with students, parents and my two wonderful and very capable Teaching Assistants, Robin and Aaron. You can find a lot information on my blog:

You can find out what we have learned in the class on a given Sunday, and what the homework is for that week:

Please feel free to email me or call me (in evenings) to talk about your concerns, like the materials we have covered in class, or home work load, or just chat like parents. My older daughter has graduated from college, and my younger daughter is a sophomore at Newton South High School. Here is my contact info:

We have two 4th graders, three 5th graders and more than ten 6th graders in current class. It’s a great group of beautiful children, and they are at the great age to learn basic math skills, and most importantly, to shape up their problem-solving abilities. It is my deep believe that every child is smart, and every child can learn and every child will exceed our expectations! My ultimate goal is, to encourage and to help our students to develop the love of (the beauty of ) math and the confidence of solving many problems in real world.

With that in mind, I will give more homework this term, not only do I believe the student can do it, but also because this is the only way that they can master a certain skill by practicing a lot. In addition to the exercise in the Work Book, I’ll also hand out two pages of Math Contest problems each week, for fun and challenge. If the hw load is too heavy for a student, the latter two pages can be optional.

Methods: subtract, add, divide or multiply to both sides by the same number.

3. Introduce concepts and methods of “isolate”, “move items to other side and change of sign”, “plug the answer/solution back in the equation”.

Key word: isolate, isolate, isolate. The key to solving many equations is to get the variables alone on one side of the equation. To solve a linear equation with one variable, we isolate the variable by following a few simple steps:

simplify both sides of the equation by combining like terms on each side;

move all the terms with the variable to one side and all the constants to the other using addition and subtraction, or just moving them to other side with change of signs;

after simplify the equation that results from the previous step, multiply by the reciprocal of the variable’s coefficient to solve for the variable.

you can always check your answer by plug the solution back to the variable in the equation, both sides should be equal. if not, go check your calculation.